By Mike Kitchel
It was a year ago this weekend in St. Petersburg, on the eve of the first practice day of the 2011 season, that the IndyCar Series entry list had one very notable omission. Dan Wheldon, the former series champ and Indianapolis 500 winner, was not slated to race in the season opener on the Streets of St. Petersburg, his beloved adopted hometown, and the site of one of the league’s signature events.

I’d told friends that if Dan didn’t secure a full-time ride before the start of the season, there was no way you’d find him anywhere near our open-wheel circus in St. Petersburg. He hadn’t spoken a word to the media all offseason and had no intentions to until he’d scored a seat. He had been close on some deals, but with the season opener within sight nothing materialized, and the previously ridiculous notion of Dan Wheldon walking through the IndyCar paddock on a race weekend in street clothes – and not a firesuit – was about to become a reality.

But as it turned out, his contract with Bryan Herta Autosport had come together, and open-wheel’s most popular driver would, in fact, be in St. Pete that weekend. Not to drive, we all quickly discovered, but to announce a one-race deal with BHA to drive at the 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500. We all recognized that this wasn’t a young rookie driver securing a top-flight drive at Andretti-Green Racing, or the most in-demand free agent in motorsports signing with Ganassi, or a still-hot commodity signing a multi-year deal to drive for Panther Racing and the National Guard.

This was a one-race deal between a driver who needed a ride and a team that barely made the ‘500’ just nine months prior. The public consensus was quick: this wasn’t going to make headlines in Friday’s paper, and certainly wasn’t going to make waves on Memorial Day weekend. There were many who had written off Wheldon years before, and this announcement – they presumed – would do nothing but further prove their assertion that Dan Wheldon was a has-been.

Realizing our friend was in town, we urged him to meet us out; a small group of close friends, hanging out at a pub downtown watching Butler University start another Cinderella run in the NCAA championship. None of us expected to see DW that night. Surely he’d meet us out in Long Beach, or Iowa, or at any other track on the IndyCar schedule, but the fact he wasn’t going to be on the grid in his hometown – a place where he was recognized in public with a near Hollywood-esque frequency – was presumably going to keep ole DW at home for most of the weekend.

But we were wrong.

Most of the time, you heard him before you saw him. I don’t use clichéd phrases like this very often, but the concept of Dan Wheldon “lighting up a room” simply couldn’t be more apt. He rarely entered a party without greeting everyone in sight. I was always amazed how many people he knew, how happy they all were to see him and, no matter who it was, how much time he spent with each of them. He remembered all their names and knew the names of their wives, husbands, and kids. He asked about all of them, remembered minute details and engaged each of them in a way that assured them he cared. A lot of fans don’t know what it’s like to have an elite driver look them in the eyes when they’re talking - DW gave out his Email address and demanded follow up.

And on this night, in parting, everybody he spoke to made sure to tell him good luck in the race on Sunday.

That was awkward. Maybe we’d allowed ourselves to forget the 800-pound gorilla sharing the room with us that night. The thought of Dan not having a ride was abnormal at best, even when we’d known it could be a possibility for months. But as the night progressed that damn gorilla kept showing its face. It came from every single person he talked to for an entire night. The later it got, the more it seemed like they were all saying it twice.

“Good luck in the race on Sunday.”

He smiled. He said thanks. And he let them go on their way. No sense in trying to correct or explain the situation to random strangers, many of whom over-served, in what surely – to the casual observer – wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense anyway. Wheldon not running in the IndyCar race this weekend? Now … wait. What?

“What do I say?” he would ask, somewhat seriously, after each of them walked away. It was a question he repeated throughout the night as each stranger departed, “What should I say?”

Having spent the better part of the last three years giving Dan ideas on how to answer questions, and always surprised by how much he listened, I had nothing for this one. I eventually acted like I didn’t hear the question, only to turn back and see him still staring, awaiting an answer. I literally had nothing.

There are a lot of words you can use to describe Dan, but ‘confident’ was always near the top. But what I always remembered about that night, as strangers approached – one after another – was that I almost, for the first time, caught a glimpse of uncertainty in him. There was a forced smile, a sustained stare into the distance, or simply a few awkward moments of silence after each stranger passed. For a guy who ended all his sentences – and text messages – with exclamation points, that was the first time I’d ever seen a question mark.

There was a modest crowd the following day at the press conference to announce his partnership with Bryan Herta Autosport, a team owned by his former teammate and a trusted friend. I can’t remember why I went. Maybe I felt obligated having attended all his appearances the last two years, because as we chatted beforehand – piecing together the play-by-play from the night before - it didn’t immediately occur to us that this announcement was in the ‘optional’ column of my schedule.

“Wait,” he said with a smile, as I moved to take a seat in the rear of the crowd. “What are you doing here, bro?”

There were a lot of snide remarks in the audience that day. A few more were outspoken about immediately putting DW on their short-list of drivers “who might not make the field” at Indianapolis. I honestly can’t recall my expectations at the time for Dan and Bryan’s pairing at Indy, but I knew Dan wouldn’t put his signature on any Indy 500 deal that didn’t have a chance of concluding with a glass of milk and immortality. A quick look at the team’s roster, which included at least four of my former Panther teammates, should have made it pretty clear this wasn’t an also-ran group. I knew he would accept nothing less at Indianapolis.

As he would tell it, the first time he ever came to the Speedway as a spectator, years before he ever ran there, he told his buddy Mark Dismore Jr. that someday he was going to win the race. People thought he was crazy then too. No moment in his career meant more than when he won Indianapolis the first time in 2005. No conversation about racing in the six years since that day had gone without a mention of him being a winner at the Speedway. And any media interview with Dan somehow made its way around to the subject of how the Indianapolis 500 was the greatest sporting event in the world.

It was less than a year earlier at the Speedway, in 2010, after finishing runner-up for the second consecutive year with Panther, that he spoke in declarations:

“I don’t care if I have to race here until I’m 86-years-old,” he said. “I’m winning the Indianapolis 500 again.”

Twelve months later he won the Indianapolis 500 again.

I thought about that night out in St. Pete a lot during 2011.

Like when the No. 98 car went streaking past our National Guard car in the final 100 yards of the race to win the Indianapolis 500. I thought about it when he was all over SportsCenter again, taking private planes around the country to tell stories of his latest ‘W’ at Indy. I thought about it when he joined the Versus television broadcast, quickly cementing a long TV career if he ever decided to retire. Or when he was handpicked by IndyCar to help develop a new chassis that is currently defined by his name.

I remembered that night in St. Pete when the promotion with GoDaddy was announced, and when I knew every CEO from Bernard to Parsons had seen enough of Dan Wheldon in one summer to conclude there was no way in hell he should be doing anything other than driving an IndyCar and promoting the series for a living. And I thought about it on the weekend of the last race of the year in Las Vegas, when he half-jokingly refused to tell me about his impending deal with Andretti Autosport, when we all knew that DW was back in the saddle.

No legend’s career is complete without a comeback. Just two months after being on the verge of embarrassment about his lack of participation in his hometown race, he was back atop the tallest mountain in motorsports - lying on the Yard of Bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, gleefully pumping his fists into the air. Just minutes before that, he’d been pouring milk on top of his head fresh off winning the most improbable and captivating finish in the 100 years since the first 500 Mile Race. And by season’s end he’d signed on the dotted line for a full-time deal to return as the headliner with a big sponsor on the team where he first tasted glory.

All told, he won Indy twice and was so dominant in 2006 before a cut tire they should have at least put half his face on the Borg. He ran Indy nine times: led in five, had two wins, two seconds, a third, a fourth and was a front-row starter three times. It’s safe to conclude that if IMS had a re-vote of “The Greatest 33” he’d have a pretty damn good view of turn one from his starting position.

Sitting here this weekend, just a year removed from that evening, one thing is very certain: there will never be any more question marks about where Dan Wheldon ranks amongst the best IndyCar drivers of his generation.

The Catalyst Blog